by Tom Clancy
"Secure the area!" Bondarenko told his remaining six men. "Collect weapons and get them handed out." It was probably over, he thought, but "over" would not truly come until that motor-rifle regiment got here.
"Morozov!" he called next. The engineer appeared a moment later.
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Is there a physician upstairs?"
"Yes, several-I'll get one."
The Colonel found that he was sweating. The building still held some warmth. He dropped the field radio off his back and was stunned to see that two bullets had hit it-and even more surprised to see blood on one of the straps. He'd been hit and hadn't known it. The sergeant came over and looked at it.
"Just a scratch, Comrade, like those on my legs."
"Help me off with this coat, will you?" Bondarenko shrugged out of the knee-length greatcoat, exposing his uniform blouse. With his right hand he reached inside, while his left removed the ribbon that designated the Red Banner. This he pinned to the young man's collar. "You deserve better, Sergeant, but this is all I can do for the present."
"Up 'scope!" Mancuso used the search periscope now, with its light-amplifying equipment. "Still nothing " He turned to look west. "Uh-oh, I got a masthead light at two-seven-zero-"
"That's our sonar contact," Lieutenant Goodman noted unnecessarily.
"Sonar, conn, do you have an ident on the contact?" Mancuso asked.
"Negative," Jones replied. "We're getting reverbs from the ice, sir. Acoustic conditions are pretty bad. It's twin screw and diesel, but no ident."
Mancuso turned on the 'scope television camera. Ramius needed only one look at the picture. "Grisha."
Mancuso looked at the tracking party. "Solution?"
"Yes, but it's a little shaky," the weapons officer replied. "The ice isn't going to help," he added. What he meant was that the Mark 48 torpedo in surface-attack mode could be confused by floating ice. He paused for a moment. "Sir, if that's a Grisha, how come no radar?"
"New contact! Conn, sonar, new contact bearing zero-eight-six-sounds like our friend, sir," Jones called. "Something else near that bearing, high-speed screw definitely something new there, sir, call it zero-eight-three."
"Up two feet," Mancuso told the quartermaster. The periscope came up. "I see him, just on the horizon call it three miles. There's a light behind them!" He slapped the handles up and the 'scope went down at once. "Let's get there fast. All ahead two-thirds."
"All ahead two-thirds, aye." The helmsman dialed up the engine order.
The navigator plotted the position of the inbound boat and ticked off the yards.
Clark was looking back toward the shore. There was a light sweeping left and right across the water. Who was it? He didn't know if the local cops had boats, but there had to be a detachment of KGB Border Guards: they had their own little navy, and their own little air force. But how alert were they on a Friday night? Probably better than they were when that German kid decided to fly into Moscow right through this sector, Clark remembered. This area's probably pretty alert where are you, Dallas? He lifted his radio.
"Uncle Joe, this is Willy. The sun is rising, and we're far from home."
"He says he's close, sir," communications reported.
" 'Gator?" Mancuso asked.
The navigator looked up from his table. "I gave him fifteen knots. We should be within five hundred yards now."
"All ahead one-third," the Captain ordered. "Up 'scope!" The oiled steel tube hissed up again-all the way up.
"Captain, I got a radar emitter astern, bearing two-six-eight. It's a Don-2," the ESM technician said.
"Conn, sonar, both the hostile contacts have increased speed. Blade count looks like twenty knots and coming up on the Grisha, sir," Jones said. "Confirm target ident is Grisha-class. Easterly contact still unknown, one screw, probably a gas engine, doing turns for twenty or so."
"Range about six thousand yards," the fire-control party said next.
"This is the fun part," Mancuso observed. "I have them. Bearing-mark!"
"Zero-nine-one."
"Range." Mancuso squeezed the trigger for the 'scope's laser-rangefinder. "Mark!"
"Six hundred yards."
"Nice call, 'Gator. Solution on the Grisha?" he asked fire control.
"Set for tubes two and four. Outer doors are still closed, sir."
"Keep 'em that way." Mancuso went to the bridge trunk's lower hatch. "XO, you have the conn. I'm going to do the recovery myself. Let's get it done."
"All stop," the executive officer said. Mancuso opened the hatch and went up the ladder to the bridge. The lower hatch was closed behind him. He heard the water rushing around him in the sail, then the splashes of surface waves. The intercom told him he could open the bridge hatch. Mancuso spun the locking wheel and heaved against the heavy steel cover. He was rewarded with a faceful of cold, oily saltwater, but ignored it and got to the bridge.
He looked aft first. There was the Grisha, its masthead light low on the horizon. Next he looked forward and pulled the flashlight from his hip pocket. He aimed directly at the raft and tapped out the Morse letter D.
"A light, a light!" Maria said. Clark turned back forward, saw it, and steered for it. Then he saw something else.
The patrol boat behind Clark was a good two miles off, its searchlight looking in the wrong place. The Captain turned west to see the other contact. Mancuso knew in a distant sort of way that Grishas carried searchlights, but had allowed himself to disregard the fact. After all, why should searchlights concern a submarine? When she's on the surface, the Captain told himself. The ship was still too far away to see him, light or not, but that would change in a hurry. He watched it sweep the surface aft of his submarine, and realized too late that they probably had Dallas on radar now.
"Over here, Clark, move your ass!" he screamed across the water, swinging the light left and right. The next thirty seconds seemed to last into the following month. Then it was there.
"Help the ladies," the man said. He held the raft against the submarine's sail with his motor. Dallas was still moving, had to be to maintain this precarious depth, not quite surfaced, not quite dived. The first one felt and moved like a young girl, the skipper thought as he brought her aboard. The second one was wet and shivering. Clark waited a moment, setting a small box atop the motor. Mancuso wondered how it stayed balanced there until he realized that it was either magnetic or glued somehow.
"Down the ladder," Mancuso told the ladies.
Clark scrambled aboard and said something-probably the same thing-in Russian. To Mancuso he spoke in English. "Five minutes before it blows."
The women were already halfway down. Clark went behind them, and finally Mancuso, with a last look at the raft. The last thing he saw was the harbor patrol boat, now heading directly toward him. He dropped down and pulled the hatch behind himself. Then he punched the intercom button. "Take her down and move the boat!"
The bottom hatch opened underneath them all, and he heard the executive officer. "Make your depth ninety feet, all ahead two-thirds, left full rudder!"
A petty officer met the ladies at the bottom of the bridge tube. The astonishment on his face would have been funny at any other time. Clark took them by the arm and led them forward to his stateroom. Mancuso went aft.
"I have the conn," he announced.
"Captain has the conn," the XO agreed. "ESM says they got some VHF radio traffic, close in, probably the Grisha talking to the other one."
"Helm, come to new course three-five-zero. Let's get her under the ice. They probably know we're here-well, they know something's here. 'Gator, how's the chart look?"
"We'll have to turn soon," the navigator warned. "Shoal water in eight thousand yards. Recommend come to new course two-nine-one." Mancuso ordered the change at once.
"Depth now eight-five feet, leveling out," the diving officer said. "Speed eighteen knots." A small bark of sound announced the destruction of the raft and its motor.
"Okay, people
, now all we have to do is leave," Mancuso told his Attack Center crew. A high-pitched snap of sound told them that this would not be easy.
"Conn, sonar, we're being pinged. That's a Grisha death-ray," Jones said, using the slang term for the Russian set. "Might have us."
"Under the ice now," the navigator said.
"Range to target?"
"Just under four thousand yards," the weapons officer replied. "Set for tubes two and four."
The problem was, they couldn't shoot. Dallas was inside Russian territorial waters, and even if the Grisha shot at them, shooting back wasn't self-defense, but an act of war. Mancuso looked at the chart. He had thirty feet of water under his keel, and a bare twenty over his sail-minus the thickness of the ice
"Marko?" the Captain asked.
"They will request instructions first," Ramius judged. "The more time they have, the better chance they will shoot."
"Okay. All ahead full," Mancuso ordered. At thirty knots he'd be in international waters in ten minutes.
"Grisha is passing abeam on the portside," Jones said. Mancuso went forward to the sonar room.
"What's happening?" the Captain asked.
"The high-frequency stuff works pretty good in the ice. He's searchlighting back and forth. He knows something's here, but not exactly where yet."
Mancuso lifted a phone. "Five-inch room, launch two noisemakers."
A pair of bubble-making decoys was ejected from the portside of the submarine.
"Good, Mancuso," Ramius observed. "His sonar will fix on those. He cannot maneuver well with the ice."
"We'll know for sure in the next minute." Just as he said it, the submarine was rocked by explosions aft. A very feminine scream echoed through the forward portion of the submarine.
"All ahead flank!" the Captain called aft.
"The decoys," Ramius said. "Surprising that he fired so quickly "
"Loosing sonar performance, skipper," Jones said as the screen went blank with flow noise. Mancuso and Ramius went aft. The navigator had their course track marked on the chart.
"Uh-oh, we have to transit this place right here where the ice stops. How much you want to bet he knows it?" Mancuso looked up. They were still being pinged, and he still couldn't shoot back. And that Grisha might get lucky.
"Radio-Mancuso, let me speak on radio!" Ramius said.
"We don't do things that way-" Mancuso said. American doctrine was to evade, never to let them be sure there was a submarine there at all.
"I know that. But we are not American submarine, Captain Mancuso, we are Soviet submarine," Ramius suggested. Bart Mancuso nodded. He'd never played this card before.
"Take her to antenna depth!"
A radio technician dialed in the Soviet guard frequency, and the slender VHP antenna was raised as soon as the submarine cleared the ice. The periscope went up, too. "There he is. Angle on the bow, zero. Down 'scope!"
"Radar contact bearing two-eight-one," the speaker proclaimed.
The Captain of the Grisha was coming off a week's patrolling on the Baltic Sea, six hours late, and had been looking forward to four days off. Then first came a radio transmission from the Talinn harbor police about a strange craft seen leaving the docks, followed by something from the KGB, then a small explosion near the harbor police boat, next several sonar contacts. The twenty-nine-year-old senior lieutenant with all of three months in command had made his estimate of the situation and fired at what his sonar operator called a positive submarine contact. Now he was wondering if he'd made a mistake, and how ghastly it might be. All he knew was that he had not the smallest idea what was happening, but if he were chasing a submarine, it would be heading west.
And now he had a radar contact forward. The speaker for the guard radio frequency started chattering.
"Cease fire, you idiot!" a metallic voice screamed at him three times.
"Identify!" the Grisna's commander replied.
"This is Novosibirsk Komsomolets! What the hell do you think you're doing firing live ammunition in a practice exercise! You identify!"
The young officer stared at his microphone and swore. Novosibirsk Komsomolets was a special-ops boat based at Kronshtadt, always playing Spetznaz games
"This is Krepkiy."
"Thank you. We will discuss this episode the day after tomorrow. Out!"
The Captain looked around at the bridge crew. "What exercise ?"
"Too bad," Marko said as he replaced the microphone. "He reacted well. Now he will take several minutes to call his base, and "
"And that's all we need. And they still don't know what happened." Mancuso turned. " 'Gator, shortest way out?"
"Recommend two-seven-five, distance is eleven thousand yards."
At thirty-four knots, the remaining distance was covered quickly. Ten minutes later the submarine was back in international waters. The anticlimax was remarkable for all those in the control room. Mancuso changed course for deeper water and ordered speed reduced to one-third, then went back to sonar.
"That should be that," he announced.
"Sir, what was this all about?" Jones asked.
"Well, I don't know that I can tell you."
"What's her name?" From his seat Jones could see into the passageway.
"I don't even know that myself. But I'll find out. "Mancuso went across the passageway and knocked on the door of Clark's stateroom.
"Who is it?"
"Guess," Mancuso said. Clark opened the door. The Captain saw a young woman in presentable clothes, but wet feet. Then an older woman appeared from the head. She was dressed in the khaki shirt and pants of Dallas' chief engineer, though she carried her own things, which were wet. These she handed to Mancuso with a phrase of Russian.
"She wants you to have them cleaned, skipper," Clark translated, and started laughing. "These are our new guests. Mrs. Gerasimov, and her daughter, Katryn."
"What's so special about them?" Mancuso asked.
"My father is head of KGB!" Katryn said.
The Captain managed not to drop the clothes.
"We got company," the copilot said. They were coming in from the right side, the strobe lights of what had to be a pair of fighter planes. "Closing fast."
"Twenty minutes to the coast," the navigator reported. The pilot had long since spotted it.
"Shit!" the pilot snapped. The fighters missed his aircraft by less than two hundred yards of vertical separation, little more in horizontal. A moment later, the VC-137 bounced through their wake turbulence.
"Engure Control, this is U.S. Air Force flight niner-seven-one. We just had a near miss. What the hell is going on down there?"
"Let me speak to the Soviet officer!" the voice answered. It didn't sound like a controller.
"I speak for this aircraft," Colonel von Eich replied. "We are cruising on a heading of two-eight-six, flight level eleven thousand six hundred meters. We are on a correctly filed flight plan, in a designated air corridor, and we have electrical problems. We don't need to have some hardrock fighter jocks playing tag with us-this is an American aircraft with a diplomatic mission aboard. You want to start World War Three or something? Over!"
"Nine-seven-one, you are ordered to turn back!"
"Negative! We have electrical problems and cannot repeat cannot comply. This airplane is flying without lights, and those crazy MiG drivers damned near rammed us! Are you trying to kill us, over!"
"You have kidnapped a Soviet citizen and you must return to Moscow!"
"Repeat that last," von Eich requested.
But the Captain couldn't. A fighter ground-intercept officer, he'd been rushed to Engure, the last air-traffic-control point within Soviet borders, quickly briefed by a local KGB officer, and told to force the American aircraft to turn back. He should not have said what he had just said in the clear.
"You must stop the aircraft!" the KGB General shouted.
"Simple, then. I order my MiGs to shoot it down!" the Captain replied in kind. "Do you give me the order, Comrad
e General?"
"I do not have the authority. You have to make it stop."
"It cannot be done. We can shoot it down, but we cannot make it stop."
"Do you wish to be shot?" the General asked.
"Where the hell is it now?" the Foxbat pilot asked his wingman. They'd only seen it once, and that for a single ghastly instant. They could track the intruder-except that it was leaving, and wasn't really an intruder, they both knew-on radar, and kill it with radar-guided missiles, but to close on the target in darkness Even in the relatively clear night, the target was running without lights, and trying to find it meant running the risk of what American fighter pilots jokingly called a Fox-Four: midair collision, a quick and spectacular death for all involved.
"Hammer Lead, this is Toolbox. You are ordered to close on the target and force it to turn," the controller said. "Target is now at your twelve o'clock and level, range three thousand meters."
"I know that," the pilot said to himself. He had the airliner on radar, but he did not have it visually, and his radar could not track precisely enough to warn him of an imminent collision. He also had to worry about the other MiG on his wing.
"Stay back," he ordered his wingman. "I'll handle this alone." He advanced his throttles slightly and moved the stick a hair to the right. The MiG-25 was heavy and sluggish, not a very maneuverable fighter. He had a pair of air-to-air missiles hanging from each wing, and all he had to do to stop this aircraft was But instead of ordering him to do something he was trained to do, some jackass of a KGB officer was-
There. He didn't so much see the aircraft, but saw something ahead disappear. Ah! He pulled back on the stick to gain a few hundred meters of altitude and yes! He could pick the Boeing out against the sea. Slowly and carefully, he moved forward until he was abeam of the target and two hundred meters higher.
"I got lights on the right side," the copilot said. "Fighter, but I don't know what kind."
"If you were him, what would you do?" von Eich asked.
"Defect!" Or shoot us down
Behind them in the jump seat, the Russian pilot, whose only job was to talk Russian in case of an emergency, was strapped down in his seat and had not the first idea what to do. He'd been cut out of the radio conversations and had only intercom now. Moscow wanted them to turn the aircraft back. He didn't know why, but-but what? he asked himself.